LGBT students speak out: What it's like to live in today's South

From its stately pine trees and hot summers to its fried foods and friendly people, the South is famous for its hospitality. But for Americans in the LGBT community, the thought of living south of the Mason-Dixon Line often conjures up only one reputation: intolerance.

Of the 12 states that still have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, seven are in the South. In places like North Carolina and Mississippi, religious freedom bills similar to the one passed by the Indiana state government last month — which many condemned as anti-LGBT — have grown substantially in recent years. And then there’s simply the region’s history of racial discrimination.

But is the South really worse off than the rest of the U.S.? In an effort to shed light on the faces of the next generation of LGBT Southerners, USA TODAY College interviewed four students who identify as LGBT and are enrolled at universities in the South.

Zachery Ferenczy, University of Georgia

When Zachery Ferenczy finished his first year at the University of Georgia, he couldn’t help but feel emotional.

“My first year at UGA, my very last day I was hanging out with my new friend … and I actually started to cry,” he says. “I told her it was the first full year I hadn’t been called a faggot.”

For Ferenczy, a senior studying family financial planning, growing up in Atlanta, Ga., as a transgender person wasn’t easy.

“In high school when I started to transition into boy’s clothes … I still got called faggot,” he says.

Classmates regularly elbowed him in the halls and coughed homosexual slurs under their breath, Ferenczy says. One time a group of kids from his high school even circled him in their car, shouting obscenities from the side of the road at his girlfriend and him.

During his senior year, the thought of going to college in the South — where acceptance of LGBT people has traditionally been lackluster — terrified him. But all that changed when he arrived on campus.

“I was terrified because it’s the South. But you can’t prejudge based on that,” says Ferenczy, who identifies as queer. “When you look at all the states where LGBT people were horribly victimized, it’s spread around. There are bullies everywhere.”

With its mix of liberal residents and young students from the metropolitan Atlanta area, Athens, Ga. — a place that Ferenczy originally thought was the home of an intolerant Southern university — turned out to be anything but.

“UGA is different because we’re so chill, I feel like. We really try to be as tolerant as can be,” he says. “What I think college really helped teach me … is the fact that (people) really don’t care — that everybody was OK with whatever I wanted to do. And that opened up my world of possibilities.”

Ferenczy has known he’s transgender for the majority of his life. When he was a child, he says he used to feel uncomfortable keeping his hair long and wearing girl clothing.

“I remember being a kid — I must have been about 4 or 5 [years old] — and thinking how much easier life would be if I was a boy,” he says.

And the older Ferenczy’s gotten, the easier it’s become. He had a double mastectomy to remove his breast tissue, started wearing clothes made for men and changed his name from Zoe to Zachery.

Although the majority of people he has met in college accept his transmasculine identity, Ferenczy says there are still lingering problems with full acceptance of LGBT people in the U.S.

“I think the biggest problem in terms of trans life that’s facing America right now is ignorance,” he says. “Learning about trans life, it’s a different way of thinking entirely. It’s like your brain has to wrap around it. But it’s not something that takes more than a day or two to really teach people.”

Whenever Ferenczy gets questions like “Are you gay or straight?” or “Are you a boy or a girl?” — he has one simple response.

“I date people who I have chemistry with, who I’m interested in,” he says. “In my mind, I don’t identify as a boy or a girl — I identify as me.”

Nathan Pulcher, The University of Texas at Austin

Nathan Pulcher, a University of Texas at Austin sophomore studying international relations and global studies, came out as gay during his senior year of high school.

He has lived in the South, specifically Amarillo, Texas, all his life. So he’s no stranger to conservative, religious environments.

“I had a pretty standard Texas upbringing. Sports were really big and Friday nights were always about football,” Pulcher says. “However, in such a religious (state), there’s hardly any expression of queerness.”

While Pulcher says that people have generally been accepting, coming out in a “very religious” small town came with its obstacles. Pulcher says he has occasionally been victim to discrimination and has “definitely felt the hate of (some) people.”

“I have to tell myself that this is part of the nature and culture of being a part of such a religious state,” Pulcher says.

“Being LGBT in the South, I wouldn’t say is nearly as much a problem — or at least in Austin, Texas it isn’t — but it’s still highly frowned upon,” Pulcher says. “(Being LGBT) is still very shrouded and very enclosed and kind of left to the hidden places of the community”

But Pulcher says coming to Austin, Texas for college helped him be more open about his identity and connecting with the city’s LGBT population has helped put him ease.

“For the most part, I feel like everyone has been very accepting of me,” Pulcher says. “As a community here in Austin, I feel like people are very positive toward LGBT people. Finding a community of gays on campus has definitely been very (helpful) as well.”

While Pulcher says connecting with other gay students on campus has been beneficial, he thinks more needs to be done to support both LGBT rights and minority rights.

“I think we have a long way to go in rights in general. But with LGBT rights, we definitely have a far way to go,” Pulcher says. “I think that as long as there’s inequality for any people — i.e. women or people of color — each minority group can definitely strive in furthering each other’s goals. I think there’s a far way to go for all rights for all people.”

Pulcher hopes that society will be more open-minded in the future, which in turn would help ensure the safety and security of others — teens, in particular — who identify as LGBT.

“Protection and tolerance are the two most important factors that come into what I believe should be happening right now,” Pulcher says.

“I guess I just feel very hesitant to put a label on my gender,” Morales, a spunky University of Florida visual arts sophomore says, laughing. “The hardest part for me as far as gender goes is that I feel most uncomfortable when people prescribe me a gender.”

Morales prefers being addressed with the pronouns “they” and “them” and identifies as a panromantic asexual, meaning Morales is capable of having romantic affection toward all people — regardless of gender — but doesn’t feel sexually attracted to others.

Morales believes gender is a spectrum — with various identities aside from just male or female — and that people be a mix of both male and female genders. As a young teenager and child, Morales struggled with gender identity.

“My gender is kind of revealing itself to me every day,” Morales says. “I no longer feel comfortable identifying as a woman. I feel really gross when people refer to me as ‘this girl.’”

Morales grew up in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and says it was difficult dealing with gender and sexual orientation.

“It made me terrified to exist,” Morales says. “It’s not exactly the same dynamic as ‘the South.’ Especially in Latino communities where my family is from, there’s a lot of queer-phobia that manifests itself in different ways than it does in white — especially Christian — communities.”

Morales says that while Miami’s Latino community didn’t use much hate language or have many hate crimes, there was a lot of erasure — or lack of acknowledgement of different sexual and gender orientations. Even Morales’ parents couldn’t understand that sexuality extended beyond identifying as either heterosexual or homosexual. But in college, Morales found solace.

“Even if people don’t necessarily agree, they’re willing to listen, and that’s pretty cool,” Morales says. “There’s something here that I’ve never known anywhere else, this idea that I don’t have to decide what my gender is specifically. I don’t have to justify myself.”

Going to college gave Morales the opportunity to start a career in music. Morales sings and plays the ukulele under the name, Insignificant Other, and haas started to create songs that deal with topics like gender dysphoria (gender identity disorder) and sexuality.

“There’s a great DIY music community up here, and a lot of the people here are very dedicated to encouraging people to express themselves in a way,” Morales says. “The other day I wrote my first song about liking a girl, and it’s pretty obvious it’s about a girl and not anyone else.”

One of the most difficult obstacles Morales struggled with was finding romantic love as an asexual. While Morales enjoys kissing, cuddling and holding hands, Morales doesn’t experience sexual attraction.

“The hardest thing really is just the feeling of inadequacy when someone wants to have sex, and I just can’t make myself be able to,” Morales says. “It makes me feel like not a normal person.”

But since starting college, Morales has found a partner and many friends who are accepting and supportive.

“My favorite experiences I have are making friends who are all very queer and all very different,” Morales says. “Just being able to bounce ideas off of people who have both very similar and very different experiences really makes me feel more like my identity makes sense which I struggled with for a long time.”

Gerardo Arce, The University of Texas at Austin

Moving from Mexico to the United States is a challenge in itself. But for Gerardo Arce, 21, it was the least of his concerns.

Arce moved from the city of Ciudad Victoria in Mexico in 2011 to attend the University of Texas-Pan American, which is based in Edinburg, Texas. In January of 2014, he transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.

Coming to America initially presented an opportunity to leave Mexico’s changing political and social landscape behind and further his education. But for Arce, it also served as a way to find himself and gather the strength to openly come out to his family and peers as a member of the LGBT community.

“Connecting to other people in a different country and being a member of the LGBT community was really hard for me,” says Arce, who identifies as gay. “I struggled to find my sense of identity.”

Arce recalls being confused and in denial about his sexual orientation back home in Mexico, thinking he was just experimenting out of curiosity at first. He later concluded that he was bi-sexual but says that he believes he was afraid to come off too strong to himself.

Attending school in a predominantly conservative area can pose issues for members of the LGBT community. And for Arce, who was also dealing with culture shock, he was confused as to where his life was going. Arce says both the South and his home of Mexico still need to put more effort into understanding and embracing the LGBT community. Religion, Arce says, plays greatly influences in the current Southern mentality.

“If people come from small, homophobic towns, they don’t really want to open themselves about their beliefs,” he says. “This has happened to me before; I would not be able to think for myself, but (would only think) what my family told me (to think).”

Arce came out to his friends and family in 2012, just after his 21st birthday. He sent a letter to his parents through e-mail and revealed his identity to his family via Skype. His parents had no idea that their son was gay, so it came as a shock, Arce says.

He recalls his dad saying that he doesn’t believe in homosexuality, which disappointed Arce. But Arce says he was happy his family didn’t try to encourage him to change.

“Even here in college I see a lot of guys who won’t come out because they’re afraid of what their family or friends are going to think,” he says.

Although staying in the closet for so many years proved challenging for Arce, he says he has made significant life improvements since coming out.

“I feel mostly independent from the pressures of my emotions. I feel more positive, more independent from my family and doing what I want to do without having the fear of what people think,” he says. “My fears are becoming my passions.”

He sees the general attitudes surrounding the LGBT community slowly changing in both the U.S. and Mexico, but sees the core of the stigma residing in what is taught to children.

“If things are going to get better, we probably need more education in the world,” he says. “We need to educate people to be more open-minded.”